Description

1792 P1C One Cent, Judd-1, Pollock-1, High R.6, MS61+ Brown
NGC. Liberty faces right with hair flowing behind. The obverse
periphery reads LIBERTY PARENT OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY, with 1792
just below the bust. The reverse has a wreath tied with a ribbon at
the bottom; ONE CENT is within. Around the rim is UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA with the fraction 1/100 below. Struck in copper with a
silver plug in the center and a reeded edge. Medallic alignment. In
this coin's most recent (and precertification) auction appearance,
the weight is given at 72.8 grains, the diameter 22.5
millimeters.

The Price of Copper and the Judd-1 Silver Center Cent
As with any coinage proposal, the Judd-1 silver center cent has a
complex genesis. One of the less-known roots of the issue is the
economic activity of an unexpected country: Sweden. The northern
kingdom held a near-monopoly on copper production in Europe thanks
to the Stora Kopparberg or Great Copper Mountain mine, and
it pushed production to finance its military and political aims.
The kingdom began making copper riksdalers alongside silver
coins of the same denomination in 1624, during the reign of
Gustavus Adolphus the Great, which led a couple of decades later to
the famous "plate money" that was used in the Swedish banking
system until 1776 and today is popularly photographed on kitchen
scales. The large size of Sweden's plate money points to copper's
place as a valuable, but not the most valuable, commodity on
the continent; while a Swedish silver riksdaler of the
period was a crown-sized coin not particularly different in size or
weight from its peers in other kingdoms, a copper
one-riksdaler plate had significant size and bulk.

In absolute terms, the weights assigned to the copper coins in the
U.S. Mint Act of April 2, 1792 were not nearly so large as a piece
of Swedish plate money. The cent was listed at 11 pennyweights
(where a pennyweight refers to the weight of a British
penny's worth of silver, 24 grains or 1/20th of a troy ounce) and
the half cent at 5 ½ pennyweights, both on the determination of
inaugural Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in his
Report on the Subject of a Mint, the 1791 predecessor to the
Mint Act. As with the gold and silver coinage listed in the Mint
Act, Hamilton assigned the copper coins weights that represented
full intrinsic value at the time, i.e. one cent's worth of copper
in a one-cent coin. A bit of math reveals how Sweden's relentless
production of copper had driven down the price of the commodity
over a century and a half. An individual large cent at the Mint Act
standard would weigh 264 grains, or more than half a troy ounce, on
its own, and 100 such cent coins would have a collective weight of
1100 pennyweights, or 55 troy ounces! Even the one-riksdaler
pieces of Swedish plate money were not so heavy.

Alexander Hamilton took notice of the weighty problem posed by an
intrinsic-par copper cent in his Report and examined silver
as a solution:

"With regard to the proposed size of the cent, it is to
be confessed, that it is rather greater than might be wished, if it
could with propriety and safety be made less: And should the value
of copper continue to decline, as it has done for sometime past, it
is very questionable, whether it will long remain alone a fit metal
for money. This has led to a consideration of the expediency of
uniting a small portion of silver with the copper in order to ...
lessen the bulk of the inferior coins..."

Hamilton, however, stopped short of endorsing a billon coin in the
manner of France, pointing out in his 1791 Report that the
appearance of a small level of silver in a large amount of copper
could be imitated cheaply by counterfeiters.

Despite the obvious differences in appearance between the cent
patterns of 1792 -- the silver-centered and obviously bimetallic
Judd-1, the "fusible alloy" Judd-2 at an identical size with the
same obverse and reverse designs, and the Judd-3 through Judd-5
Birch cents in pure copper -- all illustrated either the problem
posed by the Hamiltonian intrinsic-value cent standard or a
solution thereto. The difference in size between the Birch cents
and the silver-center and fusible alloy pieces is startling, as
seen by the to-scale images in references such as the Guide
Book and Judd's United States Pattern Coins.

While Alexander Hamilton cited the possibility of a "billon" cent,
which has common cause with the Judd-2 pattern's fusible alloy, the
immediate inspiration for the silver center on the Judd-1 patterns
appears to have come from the U.S. Mint's Chief Coiner, Henry
Voigt. A letter from then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to
President George Washington regarding the pattern cent coinage
includes the following paragraph, describing the activities of
Voigt and Director of the Mint David Rittenhouse, which is
much-reprinted in the literature on the 1792 cent patterns but
always worth a reread when considering one of these rarities:

"Th. Jefferson has the honor to send the President two
cents made on Voigt's plan by putting a silver plug worth 3/4 of a
cent into a copper worth 1/4 cent. Mr. Rittenhouse is about to make
a few by mixing the same plug by fusion with the same quantity of
copper. He will then make of copper alone of the same size, and
lastly he will make the real cent as ordered by Congress, four
times as big."

This letter, of course, is of paramount importance in fixing the
sequence of late-1792 pattern one cent coinage at the U.S. Mint and
securing the Judd-1 silver center cent's place in history.

While the Judd-1 silver center cent became the first in a long line
of unadopted prototype coins produced on U.S. Mint grounds, this is
not to say that the idea was ill-considered. The work Voigt and
Rittenhouse put into the 1792 pattern cent coinage was instrumental
in convincing Congress to amend the Mint Act in January 1793, which
reduced the statutory weight of the copper large cent from 264
grains to 208 grains. The resulting Chain cents, while still much
thicker and heavier than the Judd-1 and Judd-2 patterns, were of a
more reasonable diameter (26 to 27 millimeters) than the Judd-3 to
Judd-5 Birch cents.

The Bushnell-Parmelee Specimen
In its most recent prior auction appearance (Stack's, 10/2000), the
cataloger graded the piece as "Choice Extremely Fine, nearly About
Uncirculated." This most likely was due to the striking flatness on
Liberty's cheek, yet the seemingly "worn" plane of that facial
feature remains lustrous with only slight contact on the cheekbone.
When one "grades by surface," NGC's designation of MS61+ Brown is
truer to the mark than the Stack's assessment. The copper bulk of
the piece is rich brown with just a hint of reddish-violet color,
while the small silver plug, larger and rounder in appearance on
the obverse as always, is medium-gray with a hint of steel. Under
magnification a number of small faults appear, including a shallow
pinscratch that falls away from the tip of Liberty's nose, but the
plain line on Liberty's neck southeast of the silver plug appears
to be a planchet flaw rather than a post-striking defect. A small
dot of deep toning on the rim near the Y in LIBERTY on the obverse
may serve as a future pedigree marker.

Historically important and genuinely rare, the Judd-1 silver center
cents have a remarkable story and distinctive eye appeal. This
example has been appreciated by many famous owners, including
Charles Ira Bushnell, Lorin G. Parmelee, Virgil Brand, Colonel
E.H.R. Green, and Mrs. R. Henry Norweb. The next owner of this
remarkable and high-end piece will join their esteemed collecting
company.

Roster of Judd-1 1792 Silver Center CentsA year ago, Heritage published its roster of Judd-1 1792 silver
center cents when it offered the Morris specimen as part of The
Liberty Collection. At the time, the Bushnell specimen was ranked
seventh in our list of Judd-1 examples, but the coin's
certification as Mint State gives it a higher place in this updated
version.